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Topic: HIGH ISO Performance (Read 7988 times)

I began shooting the other night at ISO 12,800 with my 1D Mark IV, just to see how it stacks up in real world situations to my 1D-X. While not 'organized' enough to standardize all the settings between the bodies, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it did stack up. While not intending to use these photos for anything other than a high school website, I do not pixel-peep TOO much, but thought it would be interesting to see other real world, high ISO shots between all of Canon's bodies. I'll start an 1D IV example, and as time allows, I'll find some others and post later.

They look great! ?4U. What shutter speed do you usually use for sports? How low will you go? I notice 1/3200 and 1/1000. Is the faster speed just to allow you to experiment is high ISO, or do you find you need to go that fast sometimes?Just trying to pick up tips to improve my personal shooting

Both are underexposed (especially the M4 shot). You need to add a bit more ISO (or lower that shutter on the X shot). I have done this same test as I own the X and the M4 as well. The X blows away the M4 when the ISO gets really high (as needed in shots like these) like around 20,000 and up.

Thanks for the shots and tests. The one thing you will be disappointed with is the brightness of the photos at 12,800. Your first photo would be very dark for a printed 8 x 10. However, with a 1D4, if you brighten at 12,800, obviously noise becomes a much bigger issue, than if you had brightened at ISO 12,800 with a 1DX. This was just my personal experience with the two bodies, which is why I sold my 1D4 and bought another 1DX. For web only? Your photos are great. They're great for general purpose printing as well.

Some gyms are so dark I've had to shoot at 1/500s, f/2, ISO 5000, with a 1DX. However, I can brighten them in post much more easily with a 1DX than with a 1D4, because noise doesn't show up as drastically. It's a really cool comparison!

They look great! ?4U. What shutter speed do you usually use for sports? How low will you go? I notice 1/3200 and 1/1000. Is the faster speed just to allow you to experiment is high ISO, or do you find you need to go that fast sometimes?Just trying to pick up tips to improve my personal shooting

Like dbundar79, I usually shoot manual 1/500 - 1/2000, wide open, autoISO (using evaluative metering, unless I am trying to get a particular shot - then spot metering on the darkest part of jersey) with my 1D-X or 1D IV , and ISO 1600 - 5000 on my 5D3. I can certainly push the ISO higher if needed (if shutter speed drops below 1/500 or even 1/800 during action; and during time-outs, anthem, bench shots then shutter speed drops to 1/160- 1/320).Post production with LR noise reduction, and hopefully we will get other forum members to share their ideas/workflow when it comes to noise reduction options.

If you want to shoot in Tv mode and shoot to the right, a lot of times I'll put on my 70-200 f/2.8L II IS lens and go into CFn.2 and set aperture range from 2.0 to 2.8, "forcing" it to stay at 2.8, or wide open. I then set shutter speed to 1/500 to 1/1000 depending on light, auto ISO, and then set EC to +2/3 or +1. However, a lot of times I know the gym so I set ISO value manually so that I know most areas of the gym it exposes +2/3 or +1. Ashland U's gym you can typically shoot 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 4000. Instead of raising ISO, I may lower shutter to 1/640 or 1/500 depending on end of the court. I can't find any difference in noise, however, between ISO 4000 and 5000.

Post production usually has to be done quickly. My NR ranges from 25 to 40, and I typically sharpen at 55. I almost always have to adjust the exposure slider slightly, I do at least +10 clarity, but I adjust saturation by individual color. I usually default to a medium contrast tonal curve, although we all know gym lighting and often times have to adjust the green tonal curve.

I'm going to try that PS color filter too, because I have time to do my photos longer over Xmas break.

With a 1DX I know at least, you can do an 8 x 10 fairly successfully at ISO 10,000 (the highest indoors I've tried). Outdoor night football I did an ISO 12,800 and it looked pretty good.